“No.  And you were not thinking of yourself, either, I suppose,” I said.  Speaking was a matter of great effort for me, whether I was too tired or too sleepy, I can’t tell.  “No, you were not thinking of yourself.  You were thinking of a woman, though.”

“Si.  As much a woman as any of us that ever breathed in the world.  Yes, of her!  Of that very one!  You see, we woman are not like you men, indifferent to each other unless by some exception.  Men say we are always against one another but that’s only men’s conceit.  What can she be to me?  I am not afraid of the big child here,” and she tapped Dominic’s forearm on which he rested his head with a fascinated stare.  “With us two it is for life and death, and I am rather pleased that there is something yet in him that can catch fire on occasion.  I would have thought less of him if he hadn’t been able to get out of hand a little, for something really fine.  As for you, Signorino,” she turned on me with an unexpected and sarcastic sally, “I am not in love with you yet.”  She changed her tone from sarcasm to a soft and even dreamy note.  “A head like a gem,” went on that woman born in some by-street of Rome, and a plaything for years of God knows what obscure fates.  “Yes, Dominic!  Antica.  I haven’t been haunted by a face since—­since I was sixteen years old.  It was the face of a young cavalier in the street.  He was on horseback, too.  He never looked at me, I never saw him again, and I loved him for—­for days and days and days.  That was the sort of face he had.  And her face is of the same sort.  She had a man’s hat, too, on her head.  So high!”

“A man’s hat on her head,” remarked with profound displeasure Dominic, to whom this wonder, at least, of all the wonders of the earth, was apparently unknown.

“Si.  And her face has haunted me.  Not so long as that other but more touchingly because I am no longer sixteen and this is a woman.  Yes, I did think of her, I myself was once that age and I, too, had a face of my own to show to the world, though not so superb.  And I, too, didn’t know why I had come into the world any more than she does.”

“And now you know,” Dominic growled softly, with his head still between his hands.

She looked at him for a long time, opened her lips but in the end only sighed lightly.

“And what do you know of her, you who have seen her so well as to be haunted by her face?” I asked.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had answered me with another sigh.  For she seemed only to be thinking of herself and looked not in my direction.  But suddenly she roused up.

“Of her?” she repeated in a louder voice.  “Why should I talk of another woman?  And then she is a great lady.”

At this I could not repress a smile which she detected at once.

“Isn’t she?  Well, no, perhaps she isn’t; but you may be sure of one thing, that she is both flesh and shadow more than any one that I have seen.  Keep that well in your mind:  She is for no man!  She would be vanishing out of their hands like water that cannot be held.”